An Alice in Wonderland Halloween

If you know us at all, you will know that this Mama Loves a Theme!  We have dressed in theme for the last 4 years and it is just way too much fun.  This year, with Poppa Peter in town, we even got to include him in the theme.

Olivia was Alice last year for her fairy tale night, so we new that we would be doing an Alice theme this Halloween.  Thanks to my friend Sheri, even I had a pretty cute costume!   We had such a fun time and got so many compliments on our costumes.

I thought we would dress up again and have someone get a picture of ALL of us together, but sadly that didn't happen.  And, I wish I had a picture of my parents because they were dressed up too!  My mom was a witch and she scared the %*^$ out of Sydney!  And, my dad dressed as a pirate!  Such a fun night -- extra fun since it was a Saturday!

Monster Mashin'

It has been a CUH-RAZY few weeks.  Between Halloween festivities, an awesome visit from Poppa Peter, and heyyyyyaaaaaaaa buying a house {and basically gutting it, but that's a whole different story}, I haven't had the time or energy to blog.  So, here we are, two weeks after Halloween and I'm posting about it.  You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit.  ;)

Somehow, yet again, I got roped into helping plan the class parties.  OY.  Thank goodness I have two other moms to work with.  We came up with five fun stations for the first graders to do - carnival games, monster photo booth, monster craft, and two different snack stations {because what kid doesn't love to eat tasty snacks?!}

Olivia's first grade teacher was worried that some kids might finish at the stations early, so we made the class some Monster Books that they could do fun activities in.  We also made each of the kiddos glow in the dark trick-or-treat bags.  I saw the bags on someone's IG and had my brother get one of his coworkers in Atlanta to find 25 of them from the Publix grocery stores and send them to me.  Am I spoiled rotten?  ummm, yeah.  Sheri came up with the idea of making punch and putting dry ice in it.  Who's spoiled now?  Wow.  These kids are so lucky.

➹ I spent two hours one night making all of those cups.  ➹

➹ Ok, how perfect is that monster dress on Olivia?! ➹

Sydney's party was awesome!  I had NOTHING to do with it, and only volunteered in her class that day.  Lesson learned.  :)  She got to wear her costume to school and they did a little parade around the classrooms to get their candy.   Their party was at the end of class and she changed her clothes at the first opportunity!  Since Poppa Peter was visiting, he got to see Sydney in full party mode!  What a fun morning she had!

A Hoosier Halloween

As you are probably well aware, this mama likes a theme.  I especially like a Halloween theme.  And, as long as our girls will let us, we'll keep doing this whole family costume bit for Halloween.  Although, it's getting a little more difficult trying to find outfits for two {errr, three?} leading ladies.  Back in September, I started stressing out about what we were going to dress as for Halloween.  Sure, the girls could have been Anna and Elsa, along with every other girl their age, but our girls are sort of over the whole Frozen scene and I didn't want them to be like everyone else.  

My friend, Liz, was texting me one night and said how she wished her kids would just go as a football player and a cheerleader and she could be done with figuring out their Halloween costumes.  And, that's when it hit me!  Our girls could go as IU cheerleaders, and woot woot, we already had the costumes.    I figured that David could dress as a basketball player and I could go as a Hoosier fan!  We sort of threw things together last minute {as we tend to do}, but I think it turned out cute.  

The day was crazy with Liv's party at school, and then there was this whole drama with ordering pizzas for our friend's chili party and the pizzas taking longer than normal and my mom having to wait in line for 45 minutes to pick up those pizzas, butttttt.... we don't need to go there, do we?  {Thanks and sorry again, Mom!}  So, our 14 year old neighbor ended up snapping a few pictures of us, and once it was dark I realized that we didn't get our "rufferree" Magnum in the picture.  My plan was to get us all dressed up again sometime that weekend for pictures, but, yeah, that never happened.  So, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit!

➹ You can't see my striped socks, but they were my favorite part of my costume! ➹

We had a fun night trick-or-treating with friends.  We ended up going on a few different streets, hanging out in our driveway, and then hanging out with Riley and her family one street over.  Now I've got about 11.5 months to figure out what we are going to dress as next year!

Halloween Parties at School

The two weeks leading up to Halloween were cuh-razy.  We had parties at the school, at friends' houses, and even some Halloween events to go to.  In addition to all of that, I was preparing for the parties at each of the girls' schools.  I was one of the "party planners" for Olivia's kindergarten party, and I somehow sort of volunteered myself to prepare an activity for Sydney's class {plus two other classes}.  It was a bit chaotic at our house to say the least.

Buuuuttttt, everything got done and I think the parties were a great success.  It was so cute seeing all the little kids dressed up at Sydney's school.  I had NO idea what Sydney was going to dress as for the party.  I didn't think she was keen on the idea of dressing as a cheerleader {which is what she was going to be on Halloween night}.  She had told Ms. Erin that she was going to be a lion, but when I showed her the lion costume that we had at home, she said she was NOT going to wear it.  At Target, she picked out a Rapunzel costume {which I bought}, but a couple days before the party, she started telling everyone that she was going to be Elsa.  We have zero Elsa costumes.  Our friend, Angie, had given her an Aurora costume, so that and her scarecrow costume from the year before were also in play.  The night before the party, she decided on Rapunzel.  But, the morning of.... Well, she wasn't having it.  She pulled out a random t-shirt and shorts and told me that was what she wanted to wear to school.  None of the other costumes were even a choice, but as we walked past the laundry room, she saw Olivia's Dorothy costume hanging up and decided that was what she wanted to wear!  And, you know what, it was perfect!  She looked so stinkin' cute in it.  Somehow, we got her short hair into two braids {and they stayed!} and while we didn't have sparkly red shoes, we did have some sparkly shoes for her.  She looked adorable.

➹Sweet little friends. ➹

I ended up staying the entire morning -- watching them parade around the school collecting candy from the classrooms and then doing fun Halloween activities before the party.  She had such a fun day full of lots of sugar, and the best part was that Nana was babysitting her that afternoon! :)

As for Olivia's party, I didn't get as many pictures of her doing all the different stations because I was in charge of taking pictures at one of the stations.  We ended up having 6 different stations with 3 or 4 kids in a group -- they made pom pom spiders, decorated cookies, played Halloween Bingo and a Halloween guessing game with a Poke-a-Pumpkin prize, made slime, had a bean bag toss and pumpkin bowling, and made Halloween masks!  It was a busy party, and all the kids had a blast!

I'm so grateful that I have the opportunity to help out with their classrooms and that I can be a hands-on mom even when the girls are at school.

The Busiest Weekend Since Our Summer in SLO

Without our Social Coordinator Sarah to plan our weekends out here in Arizona, we usually have a little bit of downtime in our weekend schedules.  The weekend before last honestly felt like Sarah took ahold of our calendar and penciled in a month's worth of activities into three days.  We had a school Halloween party on Friday night, a dinner and hot air balloon festival in Scottsdale on Saturday, and two Halloween parties and a baby shower in between those on Sunday.  {All the while, I was prepping for two class Halloween parties I somehow became heavily involved with.}  I knew by Monday, we were going to be ready for a day off!

The girls decided to wear last year's Wizard of Oz costumes to the Boo Bash at school on Friday night.  Liv's Dorothy costume was a liiitttlleee short this year.  Poor girl was surrounded by a gazillion Elsas and even though she had zero desire to be her for halloween, I think she was a little bummed out to be the only Dorothy.  Thankfully, Brooke showed up in her Dorothy costume and all was right with the world again. ;)

Sydney was, no joke, the life of the party!  She laughed, danced, and partied at full throttle all night.  I think she will be in the yearbook more than Olivia!  She LOVES the big kids!  At one point, she got upset because Olivia didn't want her in the picture and so she started crying.  Riley swooped in and gave her a giant hug to make her feel better.  Those girls are so sweet with her.

We walked over with Ava and her family and they ended up hanging out at our house shooting off stomp rockets until it looked like the kids were about to melt down from a sugar crash.  We are lucky to have found good friends out here.

On Saturday, we convinced our parents to go with us to the hot air balloon festival in Scottsdale and I'm SO glad they did.  It was crowded, it was a little chaotic, so it was really nice to have an extra set of eyes on all of our kids!  {We met up with Ava and Riley's family too.}

Just now realizing I didn't take any pictures of the cool hot air balloons there.  Yikes.  Like I said, it was a little crazy there with all the people.  But, it was fun!

I hardly took any pictures of the Halloween parties either, but they were cute -- sweet friends, bounce houses, a magician, good food, and lots of yummy treats!

It was a fun weekend, with lots going on, but obviously it has taken us some time to recover from such a full schedule.  Let's just say that this past weekend, we did a whole bunch of nothing -- and LOVED it!